ActionAid trains care givers for Early Childhood Development program

It has been revealed that few children in Malawi have access to Early childhood Development (ECD) services because the country has few trained personnel who provide the services to the children in various care-giver centers.

Speaking during the graduation of 60 care givers from Malawi’s northern district of Chitipa which took place in of Karonga, ECD Project Coordinator for Action Aid Malawi Janet Kuyeli said only 38% of children in Malawi have an access to ECD services.

She attributed this to inadequate trained care givers to educate the children.

“As you are aware that ECD services is the foundation of every development in the country and that a child who attends these services proves to be brilliant in all stages of education, as Action Aid we want to make sure that about 10,600 children in Malawi attend these services by training care givers who will have knowledge and courage to give these services to our children,” said Kuyeli.

Care giver receiving a certificate after the training

Adding: “We all know that the first three years of a child is for brain development that determines the future of that child and how he or she can react to issues”.

She then urges the trained care givers to put in practice all what they have learnt so that the goal of the training should be achieved.

Chitipa Social Welfare Officer Joyce Ruhana concurred with Kuyeli saying Chitipa is one of the areas where children do not attend ECD services as many people do not see a reason to offer themselves to teach as they have less knowledge on the teaching.

She hailed the Association of Early Childhood Development for the training offered saying it is an encouraging effort which will attract other people to start giving the ECD services so that they should also be trained and get the certificate.

“This training has really come at a right time because schools have just opened that means these care givers will start offering the services now and apply all they have learnt here without problems and am very sure that this will be effective,” Ruhana said.

Action Aid have so far trained 320 care givers in six districts of Chitipa, Nsanje, Machinga, Lilongwe, Ntchisi and Rumphi.